An 11-year-old Iranian school girl has just become the new face of braininess after receiving the highest possible score on the Mensa IQ test.
Tara Sharifi, a student in UK's Aylesbury High School, recently took the test in Oxford, where she scored an impressive . The result puts Sharifi well above the “genius benchmark” of 140.
It also places her just ahead of Albert Einstein's of 160 (although Einstein never sat for the test and this estimation ).
It's an impressive acheivement, and none were as suprised as Tara herself.
“I was shocked when I got the result – I never expected to get such a good score,” Tara told .
“It was a joint decision between me and my parents to take the test."
Tara's impressive score means she now qualifies for Mensa membership (AKA the High IQ Society), where she'll get to meet other alumni, joining the ranks of high profile women like actress Geena Davis and US writer Joyce Carol Oates. There is currently no age restrictions for Mensa membership. In Australia, one third of Mensa’s members .
“It will be a wonderful opportunity to meet other people within the Mensa system. I have told some of my friends at school and they were really impressed,” Tara told .
Her father Hossein Sharifi told reporters that he is "extremely proud" of his daughter -- though he had an inkling of her intellectual prowess. “I figured she might do well when we watched TV and she would get maths questions before the contestants. I knew she was very clever but I did not think she would have such a high IQ.”
The 11-year-old has expressed an interest in pursuing further studies in maths -- a sign, perhaps, that she will follow late the late Fields Medal-winning mathematician footsteps?
